Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  “Exactly,” said Gallonius.

  Shut away in the side room, listening to the babble of natives gathering outside, Ruso realized he had achieved a small and unwelcome miracle. The quarreling Britons had finally managed to unite in the face of a common enemy.

  The hubbub in the Council chamber had fallen silent now. Ruso cleared his throat again and wished there were something in front of him to hold on to. He should have made notes. He should have done many things. Now that it was too late, he was beginning to see what they were.

  Someone coughed.

  A voice shouted, “Get on with it!”

  Ruso glanced across to make sure Satto was still in the side room, where he had been advised to keep out of the way. He took a deep breath and set out across the tightrope. “My name is Gaius Petreius Ruso,” he announced. “I was sent here by the procurator at the request of Chief Magistrate Caratius to help your Council find out what had happened to a missing consignment of tax money. As you know, the money has turned up.”

  There was a general cheer, prolonged by the catching-up of people who needed his words translated by their neighbors or repeated into deaf ears.

  “As you also know, both of the men who were supposed to deliver it were found murdered, and this morning we’ve all been told about the sad death of your quaestor, Nico. He was suffocated by the fumes from a brazier during the night.”

  The low volume of the murmur that followed suggested most of his audience had already heard this. Someone shouted, “Tell us something we don’t know!” The ripple of laughter around the hall did not disguise the sound of the scuffle at the back. Ruso waited until the guard had hauled the heckler out past Dias, and began again.

  “The missing money was found in the quaestor’s room by his doctor.” Ruso glanced at Gallonius. “The circumstances of his death were consistent with suicide. We know he went into the strong room with Julius Asper on the day the tax money was taken out, but we’ll probably never know how it ended up under his bed.”

  Undeterred by the fate of the previous heckler, someone called out something in British, and there were cries of agreement. Someone helpfully translated, “He pinched it!”

  “Anyway, the point is, you’ve got it back,” said Ruso. “But I’m afraid there’s more bad news.” He beckoned to the Council clerk, who stepped forward and handed him the clay mold. He held it up for everyone to see, glanced down the hall in the hope of catching the expression on Dias’s face, and stopped. Camma and Grata had just appeared in the doorway with Albanus. Camma had the baby tied in a shawl against her chest. Dias was letting them in but Albanus remained outside, shaking his head from side to side, his hands raised in a gesture of hopeless confusion that said he had not yet found Tilla. Ruso gave a nod of acknowledgment. Albanus stepped back and disappeared from view.

  Camma’s height and her bright hair made her easy to follow in the crowd, and he watched as the women edged along the back wall to find a space. Albanus had probably brought them here to keep them safe, but he had done it at the worst possible moment.

  “Get on with it, man!”

  There was no time to explain.

  “Some of you will know what this is,” he said, returning his attention to the mold. “If you don’t, it’s a mold for making coin blanks. But of course coins can only be made with the approval of the emperor.” He held up something else. “This looks like a denarius. It isn’t. Your money changer has confirmed that it’s a fake. The silver is just a coating.”

  There was a murmur of unrest around the room.

  “I’m sorry to say that a proportion of the money in your theater fund is made up of this sort of thing,” said Ruso.

  The unrest swelled to outrage and disbelief. The words money changer and fraud rose from the general hubbub.

  “It isn’t-” Ruso stopped, waiting for quiet. “It isn’t your money changer’s fault,” he said. “The coins were switched after they had been counted and checked and stored in the strong room.”

  The uproar he had been expecting erupted. Everyone was either talking to his neighbor or shouting at Ruso. One voice was demanding, “Why the theater fund?” That was when Satto appeared and shouted, “Because you idiots will never get round to spending it!” and was engulfed in a storm of accusations and demands to know why he hadn’t spotted it before. “Because it was stashed away in the theater fund!” did not seem to satisfy anyone. Dias’s hand rose in a signal to a group of guards. They pushed their way forward to drag Satto and a couple of councillors apart before a fight started.

  Gallonius lumbered onto the podium and raised both hands in the air, shouting, “Order!” to little avail. The clerk appeared with the horn and blew an off-key blast that had to be repeated three times before anyone took any notice.

  When Ruso could finally make himself heard, he said, “The unfortunate death of the quaestor means he can’t shed any light on how this was done.”

  “He was the one doing it,” prompted Gallonius, squeezing back into his seat.

  “Not alone,” Ruso said. “He wouldn’t have enough hands. Forging money is at least a two-man job. And if he was putting false coins into the theater fund so he could steal the real money, what was he doing with it? Did anyone see any evidence of him being wealthy?”

  For once, nobody had anything to say. Gallonius glared at him. This was a departure from the script.

  “I think Nico was forced to help,” Ruso said, “by someone who had some power over him. Someone who had caught him out in some way, or threatened him.”

  Both magistrates were listening intently now. Ruso tried to look over the heads of the crowd, to catch Camma’s attention. Their eyes met. He was about to say more or less what he had been told to say, and he willed her to understand that he had no choice. He hoped Albanus had warned her that Tilla was being held hostage. He hoped the guards here would have the decency to protect her when he had finished speaking. Lifting up the evidence again, he hoped he wasn’t about to make things worse for everybody. “I found these things,” he said, “including this copy of the money changer’s seal, in with the possessions of Julius Asper and his brother.”

  Camma’s scream of “No!” penetrated the uproar. Someone yelled, “Where’s our money, bitch?” Caratius was shouting, “I warned you about him! Didn’t I warn you?”

  People were crowding toward the back of the room. He could not see her now. He felt a sudden lurch of panic. What if the Dias’s men stood back and refused to intervene?

  He leapt down from the platform shouting, “Keep away from her!” and was instantly surrounded by a gang of councillors. As he struggled to push past them, an elbow landed in his ribs, a boot on his toes, and he had to grab at someone’s arm to avoid being knocked over. By the time the guards reached him, he had barely made it as far as the second bench. Shouting, “Keep them away from her!” and “Where’s my wife?” he was hauled back toward the platform. Breathless, unable to yell above the din, he gazed out over the chaos and saw a commotion going on at the far end of the hall. Dias and a couple of his men were blocking the doorway with their shields, sticks raised to beat anyone who dared to approach. Ruso scanned the crowd but could not see Camma or Grata anywhere.

  “It’s all right, Investigator.” Gallonius’s voice in his ear made him jump. He had not noticed the magistrate joining him on the platform. “We’re not barbarians. Our guards allowed the women to leave safely.”

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “I’m sure she can’t be far away. Finish your speech and we’ll send someone to look for her.”

  “I’ve got no more to say.”

  “That was a good speech, but you left out who murdered Julius Asper.”

  He had left out a great number of things. It was just as well that logic was not the Britons’ strong point. His listeners had leapt to the conclusions they were supposed to reach, despite the fact that much of his statement was equivocal and there were wide enough gaps in it to drive one of Boudica’s chariots th
rough. Ruso looked Gallonius in the eye. “I’m not going to tell anybody Nico killed Asper,” he said. “You might have got them believing Asper was a forger, but they’d never fall for that. Just remember that Camma’s got the procurator’s protection, so if anything happens to her, you’ll be getting more visits from investigators. Where’s my wife, Gallonius?”

  Gallonius beckoned to the clerk. “Have the guards escort the investigator back to the mansio, will you?” He turned to Ruso and smiled. “Thank you, Investigator. I think you’ll find that, as I said, we are not barbarians.”

  67

  Someone had been in Suite Three again. It had happened while she was out, this time, and for the best of reasons. After the guards had finished their searching, the floor had been swept, the lamps filled, and the unmade bed straightened. Still, it made Tilla uneasy. She hoped the Medicus would finish his speech soon. Once he had explained what he had found out, they could leave.

  She moved one of the chairs close to the open window, sat back, kicked off her boots, and yawned. She did not want to be in this room, but she was tired of all the questions and the sympathy. Besides, she wanted to leave Valens and Serena on their own.

  So far, her plans had not gone well. It seemed the weedy clerk Albanus had arrived with a message for her from the Medicus just after she had been called away by the soldiers, and the clerk had created a terrible fuss because she was not there to receive it. Then minutes after Albanus had hurried away to hunt for her, Valens had arrived on the fast carriage to find that neither of his children were ill, but instead everyone was in a panic looking for Tilla. So he had left Serena alone with the children yet again while he rushed off to track down the Medicus and find out what was going on.

  Now she finally had Valens and Serena in the same building, she had retreated and left them to find ways of talking to each other.

  There were plenty of women who envied Serena her charming and handsome husband, but Tilla was not one of them. Valens was like a polished surface: Everything slid off him. As she retreated from their company, she had whispered, “You must pay some attention to her!” and Valens had beamed and said, “Of course!” as if it was what he had intended all along.

  She yawned again, and gazed around the room. Apart from the dreadful business with the brazier last night-the guards had gone now, but some of the staff were still in tears-these were elegant lodgings. They were much better than most of the places she had stayed at with the Medicus on his travels. She would like to have shown this suite to some of the innkeepers they had met in Gaul who thought they were so superior. The only trouble was, with all those servants around there was nothing left for a normal person to do to occupy her time.

  She had left Londinium in a rush and she had not thought to bring any work with her. Besides, she was tired of spinning to no purpose. Already there were three big bags of skeins stored in sacks down at Valens’s house, ready to be given to a reliable weaver as soon as they were settled somewhere. Perhaps that workshop around the corner from Camma’s house-

  A shadow fell across the window.

  “Tilla!”

  The Medicus was reaching for her. His grip was feverish, as if he was afraid to let go.

  “It is all right,” she assured him. His eyes were bleary and the lines around his mouth deeper than usual. After finding that brazier he must have been awake for the rest of the night. She leaned forward to plant a kiss on his nose. “I am feeling better, and I have a surprise for you.”

  “But Valens said-”

  “It was all a muddle.” She pulled her hands out of his. “Come in quick, before he sees you and wants to talk.”

  Inside the room he still clung to her. “I told you to wait here for me!”

  “The guards said your work was all finished,” she said, “and that you were giving a report to the magistrates. They said they would tell you where I was.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Sit down and listen. You are worn out.” She rang the bell for the servant. While they were waiting she explained what the guards had told her-that after questioning people all morning, it turned out the brazier had been put in their room by the man who had been slipping the frightening notes under the door. “It was that Nico all along,” she said. “The one who was supposed to look after the money. It was him who paid somebody to attack me. After he thought he’d killed us, he went home and killed himself. Did you know?”

  Instead of saying yes or no, he just looked at her with dull eyes. She was reminded of the times when the fighting had been at its worst in the North: He had come home from dealing with the never-ending queues of wounded men, too tired to wash or change, saying he could not sleep and then dozing while his food went cold in front of him. She was surprised: it should have gone well over at the Council. Still, he was tired. He was not a man who liked making speeches. And he must be upset that Nico had nearly managed to kill them both.

  The servant arrived. Tilla ordered wine and began to tell him about the misunderstanding with the guards. At first she had been worried about going with them, especially since he had told her to stay here, but as soon as she looked across the street and saw that Gallonius’s wife really was there waiting for her, she had realized they were telling the truth. It was to be a surprise. “The Council are so pleased that you helped them find their money!”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “She wanted me to look at the house before they spoke to you.” She caught his eye. “We do not have to stay if you don’t want to. But it is a good house. And there would be plenty of patients coming through the mansio and Valens could come and visit and I could keep company with Camma and the baby until her family-” She stopped. She had not told him about the letters. No wonder he was looking blank.

  “When you are not so tired,” she said, “you will think this is funny. I have started sending letters.”

  “You?”

  “I have come to see that there is a use for reading and writing. When someone is a long way away.” She smiled. “And you can pretend to be anybody in a letter.” She had gone to the scribe in the Great Hall and paid him to write two letters for her: one from herself, the midwife, to Camma’s family, telling them their sister was left on her own with a healthy and beautiful son, and one from somebody called Ruso to Valens, telling him to get here fast as young Marcus was seriously ill but he had not wanted to frighten Serena by telling her. “So here he is,” she said. “I knew you would not mind. It is not going well between them, but I think they are both even more unhappy apart than they are together.”

  He said, “You were out looking at a house with Gallonius’s wife?”

  “Just around the corner. With a garden. We could have hens.” She wrinkled her nose. “But not a cockerel.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and made it stick up. “I came here to do a job for Firmus.”

  “And you have,” she said. “Never mind if the speech was no good. If you are doctor to the mansio you will not have to make any more speeches.”

  “Is that what you want? To live in a place like this with these people?”

  She had chosen the wrong time to tell him: She could see that now. He was tired and bad tempered. “It is not home,” she agreed. “And it is the Catuvellauni. But we have to go somewhere.”

  “The magistrates say they’re going to deal with Dias,” he said, not sounding as though he believed it.

  “Dias cannot be trusted,” she agreed. “But Camma will curse him and perhaps the gods will bring justice.”

  “I think he flattered one of the housemaids into lending him the key to our room. No wonder he wanted to question them all in private. And I’m sure he was Valens’s burglar. There’s nothing wrong with his back that I can see. If I had longer I’d-”

  “But you are not an investigator now! It is finished. Let the Council deal with it. You are a Medicus.”

  “I know it was him. And Rogatus over at the stables was helping him.”

  She was n
ot going to argue about that now. “When you are feeling better, you need to go to the baths,” she said, smoothing his hair down. “Serena’s cousin wants us all to have dinner together and I said they could use our dining room.”

  Sometimes there was no pleasing him. A few moments ago he had been worried about her. Now it seemed he could not even bring himself to speak to her. When the servant arrived with the wine, he seized on it like a drowning man grasping for a rope.

  68

  Albanus had devised himself a program of searching for Tilla for an hour and then returning to the mansio to see if there was news. He was lurching up the steps to make his second check when he met Ruso and the object of his quest leaving him a message in the reception area.

  Tilla’s, “There you are! You look even worse than the Medicus!” did not go down well.

  “What my wife means,” explained Ruso, “is that she’s sorry everyone’s been put to all this trouble because she failed to tell anyone that the guards who took her away from here were in fact taking her for a pleasant tour of the town.”

  Albanus blinked. “But sir, I thought-”

  “I know,” said Ruso. “I’m on the way to try and explain to Camma.”

  Tilla said, “Explain what?”

  Albanus shook his head. “I’ve just come from there, sir. She isn’t at home. Grata can’t find her.” He paused. “So now do you want me to look for her instead?”

  Ruso looked him up and down. “I think you’ve done enough running around today,” he said. “Go and take yourself off to the baths for a cleanup. Apparently we’re all dining here tonight. I’ll see if I can find her.”

  Tilla said, “Did she take the baby with her?”

  “No.” Albanus covered a yawn with one hand. “Grata is coping on her own.”

  “Then she cannot be far.”

  There was no sign of Camma in any of the shops around the Forum, and the women Tilla approached on the way out of the Great Hall had not seen her. Ruso left her to ask around while he went to the guards’ office. A man he did not recognize looked up from the desk and said, “Did you find your wife, sir?”